“Coral?” Imogen gave a mock gasp. “In what world would this color be considered coral? Are you sure you don’t need to have your vision checked?”
“I’ve got eagle eyes and you know it.” Farway pressed the Delete key.
Good-bye, AVERAGELY INFLATED. Nice knowing you.
“Hey!” Imogen dropped her not-coral hair and swatted at her cousin’s knuckles. “I spent, like, thirty seconds typing that.”
Farway endured her assault, kept typing: FARWAY’S EGO: RIPPED TO SHREDS BY CRUEL, UNFEELING COUSIN. RIP. Imogen was positive her cousin would’ve droned on with his pride’s digital eulogy if Saffron hadn’t decided to tackle Farway’s calf.
“Crux!” He swore as ten claws needled his shin. “Get the cat off me!”
A snicker came from across the room. Gram, the Invictus’s Engineer, cleared his throat and pretended to be wholly engrossed in his Tetris game.
“Red panda.” Imogen leaned down to remove said creature from Farway’s pants. “Ailurus fulgens in your mother tongue.”
Her cousin’s expression soured, not so much with pain as with the word mother, made all the more aching by Imogen’s use of Latin. Neither McCarthy child needed translation tech for the language because Aunt Empra always spoke it with them. Imogen could still conjugate the shazm out of words in her sleep, though she hadn’t used the skill in eleven years. Neither of them had since the Ab Aeterno had vanished. Thinking about her aunt’s disappearance made Imogen’s throat tight. She couldn’t imagine how Farway felt about it.
He brushed the subject off like he always did: “So what’s the scoop? Or were you too busy doing my job to do yours?”
Right. Imogen should probably add DASH OF CROTCHETINESS INDUCED BY RED PANDA CLAWS to the day’s tally. She’d do that later, when Farway wasn’t watching. He’d never read the logs anyway.
“Boss-man’s got you going after some pretty-pretty.” Imogen pulled up the mission specs Lux’s assistant Wagner had downloaded into the Invictus’s mainframe during their last stint in Central. “The Rubaiyat. Also known as the Great Omar. It’s a book of Persian poems. This particular edition went down with the Titanic in 1912. Bookbinders in Britain spent two years snazzing it up with gold and semiprecious stones and then sold it to an American. Obviously it never actually finished the journey across the pond. The bookbinding firm tried to make a second version, but it was crispified down to the jewels during the Blitz in World War II. Rumor has it the book was cursed.”
The image was a drawing based on archival descriptions. Three peacocks flocked across the cover; their proud tail feathers sprayed with amethysts, topazes, and rubies. The book’s edges were detailed with golden embroidery. Most of the things they stole were pretty, but this was by far Imogen’s favorite. Hence the extra pretty.
“Cursed or not, it’s got a lot of bling.” Farway whistled at the sparklies; Saffron cocked his head at the sound. Imogen scooped the red panda into her lap before he could play pincushion with Farway’s calf again.
“Over a thousand jewels,” she told her cousin. “It was worth about 405 pounds at the time. But I had Gram run the numbers, and he’s guessing with inflation and overall rarity it’s well over eighty-five million creds.”
“Eighty-five?” Farway straightened and looked over at the Engineer. “Eighty-five mil?”
Gram was doing three things at once: running pre-Grid numbers, flipping a T-shaped Tetris piece so it fit between two I-shaped ones, and shrugging a reply. “Easy. Could even inch up to one hundred if Lux fences it to the right buyer.”
“A cut from that would buy us a real nice vacation.” Imogen nudged Farway. True to the agreement he’d struck with Lux, they got one free trip to any time they wanted for every heist they pulled. This was the Invictus’s life between the hair-chalk letters: thirty R&Rs for thirty snatches. India, Walmart, the Maldives, the Giza Plateau, China’s Bamboo Sea. Imogen couldn’t recall every place they’d been—her memory was going slippery before twenty, bad sign; she needed to remember to ask Priya for fish oil pills, if she could remember to remember to ask—which was why she’d decided to start keeping the ship’s logs. These trips were worth documenting, though lately their extra comings and goings had erred on the side of errands. Going back to the 1990s for a vintage replacement part to Gram’s busted NES console, picking up specialty food for Saffron, and… looking for Farway’s mother.
The last one was never voiced aloud, but Imogen knew it for what it was. They’d been to third-century BC Egypt three times, and it wasn’t a coincidence that was the last date and location stamped into the Ab Aeterno’s official Corps logs.
“Somewhere nice,” she went on. “Somewhere fun.”
Gram looked over his shoulder. His dark eyes widened, urging her on. She was hardly the only crew member who wanted a vacation. It was easy to get cabin fever in a ship as small as the Invictus.
What looked like some hulking, iridescent snow dragon from the outside was actually… not as big on the inside. Their TM was stuffed to the brim with stuff. The bow held workstations: Imogen’s database and the blank-faced dummy she coordinated Farway’s mission outfits on; Gram’s U-shaped console, where the Engineer ran numbers and systems checks before weaving them through the Grid; Farway’s captain’s chair—facing his wall of accomplishments, the vistaport above—though he hardly ever used it. Priya’s infirmary was port side, attached to the engine room. Her time there was spent patching up Farway’s scrapes, keeping the Invictus’s fuel rods from turning them all into radiated fritters, and creating playlists for “team morale.”
The TM’s starboard was a washroom—smeared with the fluorescent remains of Imogen’s former hair colors—and a small kitchenette, where rations were stored. Most of the cabinets were filled with recycled nutrient meal blocks, which tasted like plastic foam and lasted just as long. Usually the stock stayed untouched, for EMERGENCY—if you’re on your last HANGRY legs and anything within arm’s reach is edible—situations. Nicking fresh ingredients from days-past was a much more popular option.
The central common area was where they ate meals, sipped tea, watched datastreams, and plotted their next vacation. The space also doubled as a wardrobe. Clothes from all eras hung from the ceiling pipes, long enough to brush the crew’s heads every time they moved from one end of the Invictus to the other. It wasn’t rare to spot Saffron’s tail hanging in the mix. The rest of them bunked at the stern of the ship. Their cabins were stacked in a honeycomb formation, each large enough for a bed and half a crouch. Too tiny to do anything except sleep and snag some alone time.